Here’s a detailed guide on 10 ways your body may be warning you about kidney disease, often without obvious symptoms:
1. Swelling in Feet, Ankles, or Hands
When kidneys can’t remove excess fluid, it accumulates in tissues.
Look for puffiness around your ankles, feet, hands, or even around your eyes in the morning.
2. Changes in Urination
Frequency: Urinating more often, especially at night (nocturia), or less often than usual.
Color: Darker urine, foamy urine, or blood in urine.
Urgency: Feeling an urgent need to urinate or difficulty starting urination.
3. Fatigue and Weakness
Kidneys produce a hormone called erythropoietin that stimulates red blood cells.
When kidney function declines, you may develop anemia, causing fatigue, weakness, and poor concentration.
4. Persistent Itching
Waste buildup in the blood (uremia) can cause severe, persistent itching, often difficult to relieve with creams.
5. Shortness of Breath
Fluid overload can accumulate in the lungs.
Anemia caused by kidney disease can also reduce oxygen delivery, making breathing feel harder during activity.
